


Applied

by alantieislander



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, College Student Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Graduate School, Non-COVID related illness, Professor Ben Solo, Soft Ben Solo, Teacher-Student Relationship, Thirsty Rey (Star Wars), Unprotected Sex, Workplace Relationship, kind of?, no beta we die like men, rey is on the pill obviously, technically unequal power dynamics but rey knows what she wants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-21
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-27 08:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30119874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alantieislander/pseuds/alantieislander
Summary: It was several months into her grad coursework when the assistant research position was pinned on the bulletin board outside of her advisor's office. It was handwritten in dark, looping ink on yellow legal paper, and she knew right away that the job was hers.Just like she knew he was hers, that very first moment.In which Ben is an absent-minded professor, and Rey is his grad student and just wants to take care of him.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 64
Kudos: 173





	Applied

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LaneReads (AlaMac0801)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlaMac0801/gifts).



> I know nothing about robotics, mechanical engineering or anything else remotely related to that field of study. I just know love. Please overlook my vague descriptions of what these two are actually working on. It's science-y or something, I don't know.
> 
> This is dedicated to Lane, for being both a cold stone bitch and a soft romantic baby. You’re the lime and salt to my tequila.
> 
> This is unbetaed, since Lane is my beta, and this was a gift for her, plus I’ve always wanted to use Vuas’ “no beta we die like men” tag.

[](https://imgur.com/oDwZjsM)

Rey knew her heart was no longer hers the moment she saw him.

His hair was flat on one side where he’d slept on his desk, glasses slightly askew. He gestured to the room and said, almost apologetically, “This is it,” and then “Your desk is there.” His voice was low and sleep-tumbled. Then he combed one big hand through his dark hair and made it even more of a mess and she was a goner.

His research lab was in a small brick building on the edge of campus, an old building, just one room with a walk-in vault and a tiny office with a bathroom. Lab was a strong word, it was more of a glorified workshop with very expensive equipment. It’s where he spent his career, like his mother before him and his grandfather before her. The Skywalker-Solos were patent-holders and award winners in robotics, mechanical engineering, and aviation technology - the best and brightest. Ben was already a legend just for existing, but he also just so happened to be worthy of it.

It was several months into her grad coursework when the ad for an assistant research position was pinned on the bulletin board outside of her advisor's office. It was handwritten in dark, looping ink on yellow legal paper, and she knew right away that the job was hers.

Just like she knew he was hers, that very first moment.

She had been hired quickly, with little fanfare, just an email telling her when she would start and what kind of hours he was supposed to give her and it was very clear that the assistant position was only offered because of his obligation to the university. She was sure that he’d written and posted such an odd, unprofessional little ad so that perhaps no one would notice it, let alone apply. And that was true for everyone. Except Rey.

She arrived at 8:30am every day to one or two sticky notes on her computer screen (with that same lovely handwriting) asking her to order a special part or correct some code or something, and every morning she would do what he’d written and make sure that the coffeemaker was cleaned between use. Or make sure that her reports had more detail than any professor would ever ask for. Or make sure that the cream in the fridge was fresh. Or that he had enough light blue post-it pads left in the storage closet, because those were his favorite.

He wasn’t helpless or anything, but he was dedicated to his work in a way that made him distracted at every moment of his life. He heard, but not really. He noticed dust on the edge of a computer screen, but not that he’d left the faucet running after he’d washed his hands. Little things that made up big things, and Rey wanted always to be there to take care of it all.

She watched him whenever he’d emerge from his office, covertly tracking his movement around the room like a daisy tracks the sun, always aware of where he was at all times.He’d stop at each and every computer connected to each and every small part or electric panel, and watch the numbers flit across the screen like they held the fate of the world, and not the results of the connections in some new kind of IR sensor that he was developing. But perhaps even that also held the fate of the world. He was a genius, after all.

Except for the occasional phone call or string of curse words when an experiment didn’t go the way he had hoped, they worked together in companionable silence. She figured if he really didn’t want her around, he would make it clear, in words or writing or cold indifference, but he never did. Instead he made a pot of coffee big enough for two every morning, and that was enough.

His experiments were his and his alone, except for the paperwork which it was always her responsibility to keep organized. So when he would be out in the room and working, other than watching him, she didn't offer any assistance. Until one day, when he began muttering angrily to himself in front of a small machine that was silent, and a black computer screen. She walked up behind him and his spine tensed, but he did not turn.

A few key strokes. A frustrated sigh. He checked the power source. He turned it upside down and stared at the bottom of the panel. He control-alt-deleted the computer. And then,

“Here, let me,” she said, and she reached her small hand into the space between the devices and pushed the small connector. It whirled to life, diagnostics filling the screen.

She could feel his eyes on the side of her face, and when she found them with her own, he was practically beaming at her, or at least the Ben version of beaming - a shy, kind of surprised smile.

“Thank you, Rey,” he breathed softly, and she bottled it up like a jar of fireflies and carried it carefully all the way home.

He saw her after that. Not that he didn’t see her before, but something in him yielded to her. Opened. He looked up from his desk when she arrived in the morning. He chuckled when she’d responded to his post-its with her own, arranged in a smiley face on his computer screen. Their companionable silence turned into companionship.

“Let me get it,” she said one afternoon, shooing him away as she ordered lunch on her phone. He flipped through his wallet, desperately looking for cash to help pay. “Please, Ben” she rolled her eyes, “the app is linked to my card anyway-- it’s my treat.”

He nodded absently and said “Well thank you, then,” in his quiet little way, and turned back to his work and her heart expanded so fully she had trouble breathing.

There was something primal about it, just knowing that his belly would be full for the rest of the day on food she acquired for him. He would be satisfied and fueled and he could focus on his work, and when he went home to a kitchen that had nothing more than a few apples and a pack of crackers or whatever weird things absent-minded single men buy for themselves, he would be okay because he’d had such a good late lunch. He was taken care of, and she was the one who did it.

One important day was colored orange on the online calendar to remind them both that he was being interviewed by a major technology publication on zoom that afternoon, but when she opened the door that morning, it was obvious that he hadn’t been home since yesterday. He was just waking up at his desk again, and the coffee pot was cold and empty.

He shrugged sheepishly, looking at his watch through smudged glasses.

 _Here, let me,_ she said,

and she touched him for the very first time to take his glasses off his face and wipe them off. His body went stiff, and she heard him swallow as she threaded the temple tips back into his hair to his large lovely ears. He cleared his throat, the blush crawling up his cheeks, and she couldn’t help herself– she smoothed his collar down, too.

He nailed the interview, and the feature ran a month later to stellar feedback. _’Ben Solo Sees the Future’_. His email and voicemail box were full for weeks after– everyone wanted to talk to him. She was so proud. She taped the article to his door and drew six exclamation points on it in green marker. He blushed again when he saw it.

Soon he began to track _her_ movements around the room. He stood up now when she arrived in the morning. He’d bring the coffee pot to her desk and pour her a fresh cup. He asked her to read a paper he’d written. He asked to read what she was writing. The questions started, so timidly at first, but there were now “How was your night?”s and “You look nice today”s, and they orbited around each other like the earth and the moon. Like magnets or elements with a covalent bond.

 _Let me,_ she soothed,

hands on his shoulders as she stood behind him. Hard thumbs in his shoulder muscles, and then the back of his neck, under the fringe of his long hair. He relaxed and thanked her, and she was dizzy with it.

Days turned to late nights with cold takeout and piles of forms and pages of coding in the bright white light of the computer screen. There was laughing, and quiet words, and poring over work that they chipped away on together, as partners. And then she put her hand on his knee, and he shifted in his seat and she almost teared up with how much she wanted him.

 _Let me,_ she pleaded,

and dropped to her knees in front of him. He was strung tight like a bow, but his eyes went half-lidded and his mouth slack. His cock strained against his pants, bouncing free easily when she unzipped him. The salty hot hardness of his cock felt like relief, for them both. To finally have him, to finally take him into her mouth.

He leaned forward and cupped the back of her head as he fought against the urge to thrust too hard into her little mouth and she gulped him down eagerly. She knew she’d never forget his face as it crumbled into ecstasy, and then soft release and she wished she could burrow her head into this space between his thighs and sleep there, just to be close to him.

_Let me take care of you._

\--

She’d been working so hard that she was sure it was exhaustion, but a day into the bone-tired heaviness she felt, her throat started hurting, and then her head. The campus med clinic swabbed her for the flu and sent her home. Rest, they said. Lots of liquids. Rest.

But if she was resting, she wasn’t with Ben, and if she wasn’t with Ben, he had no one to take care of him. She sat in the car for 20 minutes trying to decide if she should go make sure there was enough food in the fridge at the lab for him to have lunch for the next few days, but instead her illness won and she sent him an email saying she was taking a sick day, and went home. She slept through her alarm the next morning, and 8:30am, and the day passed in a bloom of fever dreams in all of his colors: yellow legal paper. Blue post-its. Orange calendar. Green marker. White light. Brown eyes. Black sweater.

It was red behind her eyelids from the setting sun through the curtains when the doorbell rang. She wrapped herself in a fluffy robe and shuffled to the door to find him there, standing on the porch of her little apartment with a jar of soup. He was still wearing his campus ID lanyard, and one of his shoes was untied. She smiled softly and opened the door.

“Hi,” and that was all. He shifted on his feet, and she opened the door wider in invitation. He stepped in, more hesitant than she’d ever seen him.

“Can I get you something? Tea? Have you eaten? Want some soup?” she joked weakly, gesturing to the jar in his hand.

He looked around the room awkwardly and opened his mouth to say something, but then he looked back at her and took in her little flushed body, red nose, fluffy robe, and suddenly stopped fidgeting, as if he forgot what he was nervous about.

“You need rest.”

“That’s what they say,” she said, stuffy nose keeping half of her voice in her head. She expected him to hand her the soup, give her an awkward pat on the shoulder or something, and leave.

But he didn’t.

Instead he put down the jar on the console table, and took her hand.

Instead he led her down the hall to her bedroom, pulled back her blankets, and wheedled her into her bed.

Then he undressed, slowly, one piece of clothing at a time, peeling away every ounce of the work that he always, _always_ carried with him, and leaving behind only Ben Solo, naked and magnificent in the muted light of her little room. He slid under the down comforter and wound his limbs around her little fluff-wrapped body.

 _“Let me,”_ he said tenderly,

and kissed the top of her hair as she burrowed into his embrace

and untied her robe so his huge hands could smooth warm paths on her bare skin

and kissed the soft places of her throat, ears, the gasping corners of her mouth as her body loosened beneath him.

And then fed his cock into her feverish, wet opening, filling her as she swore softly against his neck, so grateful, so warm – finally totally warm.

His hands kept up their journey - knee, to thigh, to hip, to the swell of her belly, the flat plane between her breasts, spreading sparks along her skin as he moved in and out of her. Everything moved so slowly, his lips mouthed barely-there words against her sweaty temple, and she keened beneath him, overwhelmed by his skin and his sweetness and his place in her arms.

Then after endless time of long slow thrusts, he pushed all the way in and stilled, letting the weight of his body fall on hers, content just to be there and connected. Just them and this and the heat they were making. She hummed and wrapped her legs around him, lazily clenching on his cock in the dark sleepy space of slow sex at twilight.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“For what?” she whispered back. A drop of sweat ran down her jawline, and he licked it off with a flat warm tongue.

“For taking care of me. Not having you near me yesterday, and today, was” he lifted up to look down at her, “- horrible, Rey. It was horrible. Not because you weren’t there, but because I wasn’t with you.”

“I - never want _oh—_ ” her voice cut out when he rolled his hips just so, and the hand that had been making tracks from her wrist to her shoulder moved inward, to the crest of her labia. She arched into his body when he bent his knuckle against her clit.

“You never want what?” he asked innocently, and Rey gasped as he kept moving and rubbing until the sparks he’d been warming her with on the outside started bursting within her, and she couldn’t hold back the moan. He watched her intently, as though she was an experiment going exactly as planned, and as she writhed and shook through her orgasm beneath him. Soon he followed, squeezing his eyes tight and filling her with his cum.

The room was quiet except for the sound of them catching their breath, and then Ben rolled so that Rey’s body was spread out over his like a cover. Her perfect place.

“I never want to be apart from you again,” she admitted, voice hoarse from fever and pleasure.

He combed his fingers through her hair and tugged ever so slightly so she would lift her head and he could see her face. Even with everything they’d done, all the work and the touches and time, in that moment, Ben - staring into her flushed face after they just made love in her bed - was the most intimate and naked and special she'd ever felt. And then he slanted his mouth to hers for the first time.

The evening light gave way to darkness rising, and they dozed, and kissed, and made love once more. And when the room turned blue again with morning, Ben crept out of the bed and redressed, leaving her small healing body sleeping against sheets that smelled like both of them. 

She found it on her nightstand when she woke up. The note was written on a piece of notebook paper from the binder on her desk, with pink marker from the drawer.

_‘Went back to the office to check on a few things._  
_Found your coffee and brewed some for you._  
_I’ll be back at noon with sandwiches._  
_\-- Ben'_  


She kissed the big swoops of his perfect handwriting and then held it to her heart and smiled at the ceiling.

They would take care of each other.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me being a soft but sassy artistic and opinionated entity [on twitter.](https://twitter.com/alantieislander)


End file.
